Series / It's Me or the Dog

Edit Locked

Animal Planet's show about owners of problem pets seeking the advice of expert trainer Victoria Stilwell. It's like Super Nanny for dogs, which is no surprise seeing as it's produced by the same company.

This show provides examples of:

Abusive Owners: Some, such as the owners of Roxy, an aggressive bulldog. Sometimes it's on purpose, and sometimes it's because the owners have been given bad advice. For example, Roxy's owners were told to put a shock collar on her as a puppy, and spray her in the face with citronella spray, as part of "training."

All Animals Are Cats: In a twist on the original trope, Victoria once worked with a woman who had only ever owned cats before. When she got her first dog Niles, she treated him more like a cat, which significantly contributed to his aggression. Victoria had to firmly explain that Niles was a dog, and how he should therefore be approached/treated.

Berserk Button: For Victoria, any sort of harsh training method, particularly choke collars or shock collars. There's also "de-barking," a practice in which the dog's vocal cords are actually cut to stop it from barking.

Another is hitting the dogs to discipline them.

She once went pretty berserk after seeing a duplex covered in dog urine and feces; parts of this home were declared a health hazard.

Beware of Vicious Dog: Victoria feels that a dog being overly aggressive towards harmless strangers is detrimental to its owners (nobody wants to come over, neighbors complain, and the mailman gets super stressed), and thus trains them to associate guests who are welcome at The House with good things happening (i.e. delicious treats).

She also trains Big Friendly Dogs to not jump up and slobber on people, because that can scare the dog-phobic and/or cause injury.

Cute, but Cacophonic: Some of the dogs she works with are extremely loud, to the point of driving their owners (and their families, and neighbors) bonkers. More often than not, the dog makes so much noise due to insecurity and nerves.

This was taken Up to 11 in 6/23/2012 episode "He Has to Go." There was a group of four dogs and the husband had hearing loss because of the continuous barking. Victoria actually brought in a decibel meter and showed that the levels were well over 100 with one dog and over 110 with another. According to the National Institute on Deafness, constant exposure to sounds even above 85 decibels is enough to cause hearing loss. 110 decibels is about equivalent to a power saw at close range.

Dogs Are Dumb: Averted, and one thing Victoria tries to teach owners is that their dogs are a lot smarter and able to learn new things than many people give them credit for.

Dog Walks You: Owners of larger dogs featured on this show frequently have this problem until Victoria demonstrates how to properly handle their pet when on a walk.

Edutainment Show: While there's the usual disclaimer, if you watch this show regularly, you'll probably absorb a lot about dog training.

Exactly What It Says on the Tin: While it really isn't all that common, occasionally Victoria is called in to deal with a true "It's me or the dog" situation. The situation has gotten so bad with the dog or dogs that one or more of the people in the family has declared that if the situation doesn't get fixed, then either they go or the dog(s) go. This occasionally leads to a Title Drop on the part of one of the owners.

Many of the troublesome dogs have, however, caused wider social relationships of their owners to deteriorate because friends won't come to the house or are afraid for their children to visit (in one case, the owners' adult daughter found her family home intolerable thanks to the Great Dane that now lived there).

Eye Take: Victoria tends to be pretty deadpan, but when some things go beyond even her ability to comprehend, she will frequently give these to the audience.

Mr. Muffykins: Victoria gets called in for quite a few of these. More often than not, it's more a case of bad dog owner than bad dog, since many of them erroneously think their animals are too small to be a real problem if they fail to properly train them and just allow them to misbehave without correction.

Only Sane Man: Sometimes occurs in families where the dogs are spoiled beyond reason. Certain family members, or sometimes a group, will disapprove of the spoilers' behavior to no avail, until Victoria arrives. Said word for word by Ben in the early episode featuring Toadie and Smartie, two Great Dane/Lab mixes who were allowed to run riot and fed gourmet meals while the family lived on frozen entrees.

Reality Show Genre Blindness: Some owners suffer a specific form of blindness. They've seen the show before and know perfectly well the types of methods that Victoria recommends. It's just that they need someone to come in that isn't the husband/wife/other loved one they've learned to tune out to get them to do the right thing. See also the entry just below.

Taken to new levels in the 7/3/2012 episode "This Dog is Ready to Implode." Not surprising with a situation that was seemingly pushing all of Victoria's buttons at once — a dog that was being subjected to a shock collar (and scent collars and other such nonsense in the past), a brother of one of the owners that was coming in and teasing the dog, a family that didn't seem entirely serious with the training, and to top things off, the family bringing in another reactive dog that they were babysitting without informing Victoria in advance. Things were so bad that Victoria almost seemed ready for a Rage Quit.

Red Eyes! Take Warning: Becky, the owner of Diesel, a humping and aggressive husky, claims Diesel's eyes turn from icy blue to red when he's angry. It's unclear whether this actually happens or if it's a bit of clever camera work.

That Makes Me Feel Angry: "It, it, I, I... it makes me so angry when, and I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at the people who say 'We're dog trainers. And the way we're going to train your dog, your puppy, is to put a shock collar on it. And then we'll train it to be obedient.'"

Trademark Favorite Food: During the New York season, Victoria would sometimes share Kit Kat bars with the owners as a reward.

You Fail Animal Care Forever: Victoria frequently ends up chewing out owners for feeding their dogs things they should not be eating or engaging in patently unsafe practices.

Likewise, failing to understand the type of breed they have. One couple wanted to train a Presa as an attack-dog, not realising that they can grow to a massive size, have a high prey-drive, and require a lot of obedience training. Add to that having young children running around, Victoria calls them out on how utterly foolish that would be.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy